Hello from Barcelona! Today I had the honor of joining Nokia at its App Developer Conference to help kick-off Mobile World Congress. Nokia shared some great phone and app news that you can read about here. For Microsoft, today is about showing you, our Windows Phone developers, the progress you have made. I’d also like to announce a few more tools and programs to make it even easier for you to develop for Windows Phone.

How are we doing?

By now, you are familiar with our strategy of fostering an ecosystem around Windows Phone: an ecosystem characterized by quality, scale and developer opportunity. This strategy is taking root at an accelerated pace with partners and developers reporting real and sustained growth following the launch of Windows Phone 8.

Every day there are more signs of people’s belief that Windows Phone has evolved from being a solid contender to a compelling alternative. Just last week, the Nokia Lumia 920 won Engadget’s Reader’s Choice award for best smartphone of 2012 – by a wide margin. Also earlier this month, the Lumia 920 took on all comers to be named Gizmodo’s “Best Smartphone Camera” of five that were tested. The Lumia 920 is also being honored this week as a GSMA Best Smartphone nominee. Most importantly, people love their Windows Phones and its apps. A January report from ChangeWave Research found that Windows Phone customers are more likely to be “very satisfied” with their phones than Android users (53% for Windows Phone users vs. 48% for Android).

Moreover though, this qualitative praise is translating into quantitative opportunity for Windows Phone developers. We started by getting phones in front of the right people, making it easy for users to buy apps (e.g. PayPal, Alipay and carrier billing) and expanding to new geographies to grow our total addressable market by 90% in 2012. You’ve probably read reports of a 4x increase in Windows Phone sales over last year’s holiday season. In fact, we’ve achieved more than 10% marketshare in a number of countries (source: IDC Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Feb 2013).

The Windows Phone Store has also experienced a significant increase in activity - the highest in our history - with a 75% increase in app downloads, a 91% increase in paid app revenue and eclipsing 1 billion transactions. We’re also seeing higher levels of engagement with the catalog (thanks to your great apps), with a steady increase to an average of 55 downloads per user.

Windows Phone Developer Opportunity

The Windows Phone developer community itself is growing rapidly as well. Developer registrations are up by over 40,000 in the first 90 days since the launch of Windows Phone 8, and we’ve already seen 15,000 new apps that specifically leverage the new platform functionality Windows Phone 8 provides. All told, you’ve created a catalog of more than 130,000 apps and games – designed specifically for a differentiated Windows Phone UI and ecosystem. And we expect this growth to continue as the number of Windows Phone 8 SDK downloads just passed 500,000 in less than 4 months from its release on October 30, 2012.

Over 130,000 apps and over 40,000 developer registrations since the launch of WP8. The average of 55 downloads per user came as a surprise to me. With the new low- to medium-end devices from Nokia, it looks like WP8 is going to have a great year.

There may be a lot of apps in the Store, but many of the key ones are still missing. I know most Windows Phone users say they don't care about Instagram or Temple Run, but lack of those apps is a deal breaker to consumers who are switching from Iphones/androids.

There may be a lot of apps in the Store, but many of the key ones are still missing. I know most Windows Phone users say they don't care about Instagram or Temple Run, but lack of those apps is a deal breaker to consumers who are switching from Iphones/androids.

Which major apps are missing besides Instagram or Temple Run? I'm asking because I'm genuinely curious and I can't remember one or two that I had in mind yesterday.

Anyway, Twitter recently received a major update (see here) and WhatsApp did too.

Which major apps are missing besides Instagram or Temple Run? I'm asking because I'm genuinely curious and I can't remember one or two that I had in mind yesterday.

The apps that my Iphone friends always use are tumblr, pintrest, flipboard, and snap chat. I know a few of those have alternatives, but it's just not the same. Also I'm looking forward to Pandora and for Spotify to add free radio to their client

There may be a lot of apps in the Store, but many of the key ones are still missing. I know most Windows Phone users say they don't care about Instagram or Temple Run, but lack of those apps is a deal breaker to consumers who are switching from Iphones/androids.

I just switched from an iPhone 4s to a Samsung Ativ S and I can't say I've ever installed Instagram or Templerun

You can take a photo and upload directly to FB... why exactly do they need instagram... to add ugly filters. WP8 has extendable filter modules built into the camera app. if you must ruin your pictures.

The apps that my Iphone friends always use are tumblr, pintrest, flipboard, and snap chat. I know a few of those have alternatives, but it's just not the same. Also I'm looking forward to Pandora and for Spotify to add free radio to their client

A Tumblr app is on the way for WP8. As for Pinterest, Flipboard and Snap Chat, they may or may not have alternatives but I'm hopeful that we'll see more popular apps as WP8 grows.

You can take a photo and upload directly to FB... why exactly do they need instagram... to add ugly filters. WP8 has extendable filter modules built into the camera app. if you must ruin your pictures.

That may be true but it's a popular app. I personally have no need for it but lots of people want it so Microsoft and/or Facebook should work towards making it available for WP8.

Anyone here gone from iPhone to WP8? Care to share your experiences? I like the look of my wife's WP7 device but the amount of apps on the App Store keeps me as an Apple customer. How's the OS for games? I compared GTA3 side by side with my friends Galaxy S3 but the 4S seemed to have better FPS making the game a lot smoother.

Still no facebook app, yes, people want that. No meaningful fitness apps. No syncing/media management app (not a phone app). No US Bank, No US IngDirect. So what's the point of the 130k.

MS needs to stop spouting app numbers, and get the 10-20 apps the platform needs! I'm tellin' ya, if MS doesn't get it's app act together fast for Surface RT and WP8, all these cheap android devices that are proliferating are going to leave them permanently in the dust. I feel the Window of opportunity for serious challenge is closing quickly because MS has dropped the ball across the 8 board with lack of the right apps.

Edit: IMO, the tablet war is over. MS will not make significant inroads in the consumer space there. Android then iPad, and that's basically it. They dropped the ball with no middleware (Zune8/iTunes) and lack of killer apps. I'd like to be wrong, but I doubut it. Android tabs everywhere and they are actually fast.